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Potentially Useful Cycle Bypass of Road Closure |
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This potentially useful by-pass has been negated by legal (silver Passat) and illegal (blue Civic) parking. |
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Fancy your chances of getting through? |
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Update: Comment from DH : send the photographs to the Blue Meanies, I'm sure
they would be keen to pass by.
I did once see a Traffic Warden at this location. The parked cars were soon back, however. (point of information : "Blue Meanies" are Edinburgh's Traffic Wardens) Comment from SS: At least the council tried, its not their fault people decide to ignore the parking restrictions etc A good point. Any scheme can be rendered useless by bad parking. The silver Passat in the photo is legally parked, however. A liberal application of double yellow lines could have helped in this case. |
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The West Approach Road |
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Around Edinburgh you'll see signs like this, directing light vehicles to the West Approach Road, a route to the city centre built on an old railway alignment (not all the signs are hanging off their posts like this one!) |
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But when you reach the road, you'll find cycles are not allowed. So, the council either thinks that cycles are not "light" or that they are not "vehicles". Which is it? |
| Update: A bit of digging around revealed
that the official definition of a 'light vehicle' is 'a motor vehicle
with three or four wheels, not being a minibus'. So, officially, a
bicycle is not a 'light vehicle' which seems somewhat contrary, as a
bicycle is defined as a vehicle in law and is very light (at least
compared to a car). The signing is still wrong, however, as, officially,
motorcycles without sidecars are not 'light vehicles' but they are allowed
on the West Approach Road.
Comment from AB: I think preventing cyclists from using the western approach road IS the right idea, for our own safety - its a narrow road with 50mph traffic and some S-bends with poor visibility ahead, way too dangerous for cycling on ! I disagree. There is no excuse for building new roads which are not suitable for cycling on. As this road is relatively new, it should have been designed to be used by all road-users. (Point of information: the speed limit for the road is 40mph, as can be seen in the photo above). I believe that the road was built to create a fast route to the city centre for cars, having cyclists use the road would have delayed the cars and hence cycling was banned. The point I was trying to make was that the signing could lead a cyclist to believe that the route was open to them. As mentioned above, a cycle is not, officially, a 'light vehicle', whilst it is a vehicle. The signing would mislead a cyclist into thinking the route was available to them. There are a handful of other old railway alignments in Edinburgh that are open to cyclists and these can provide useful links. Of course, unlike the West Approach Road, pedestrians are not banned from these old railway alignments. And, these alignments are the perfect place to start building if another road is needed. |
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